


Start of Something New

by iknowpIaces



Category: High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (TV)
Genre: F/M, Nini is in this briefly, Pining, Post 1x06, Rina - Freeform, endgame we deserve, hsmtmts, i guess?, they're so cute, uh angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:15:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21803569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iknowpIaces/pseuds/iknowpIaces
Summary: He looks happy. Gina smiles at that realization. If anyone deserves happiness, it’s Ricky.She’s happy for him, Gina tells herself.Yeah. She is.Really, she is.Until she's not.
Relationships: Ricky Bowen/Gina Porter
Comments: 21
Kudos: 201





	Start of Something New

**Author's Note:**

> I really suck at summaries.
> 
> Also, I was told not to ship Rina so I made a fic <3
> 
> (Please excuse any grammatical errors I kinda wrote this out too fast).

.

Nini and Ricky get back together. It was inevitable, right? That’s what everyone says.

Gina doesn’t know how to react to the news. She just stares at her phone screen, mindlessly staring at the newly posted Instagram photos confirming the couple’s status.

He looks happy. Gina smiles at that realization. If anyone deserves happiness, it’s Ricky.

She’s happy for him, Gina tells herself.

_ Yeah _ . She is.

-

They still talk, like, all the time. Ricky is probably the first person Gina’s truly considered her friend in a really long time, and she wasn’t about to let that go- no matter how much these weird, little feelings at the pit of her stomach bug her. 

Sometimes they have lunch together; ever since he found out she likes those chocolate granola bars his dad always buys, Ricky makes sure to bring her an extra for her. If he only brings one, he offers to split half or sometimes, he’s willing to give her the whole thing.

It’s sweet. He’s sweet.

Sometimes Nini and other kids from the play join them for lunch. 

Nini’s nice, Gina decides. A little perky, sometimes, but nice and sweet. She’s good for Ricky. 

_ They’re good for each other. _

Gina tells herself this repeatedly. Sometimes it helps the odd feelings in her stomach go away, but sometimes, it makes them worse. 

But it doesn’t matter, because Ricky’s happy and Gina’s his friend, so by default, she’s happy too.

Really, she is.

-

Until she’s not.

Gina’s happy for Ricky, yes, but at the same time, she’s not happy. 

She realizes this as she watches him during rehearsal. He looks her way, smiles, and only then does it dawn on her why her stomach bubbles and why her heart skips a beat anytime she’s around him.

Gina likes him. 

That thought alone scares her, so much that she ends up silently sneaking out during rehearsal. 

“This isn’t happening,” she breathes out, leaning against the lockers. 

Gina’s always sort of liked to keep things in control and yet, it seems like she failed to keep her heart in check.

“Hey, Gina!” Ricky’s concerned voice comes from the direction she had just come from moments earlier. “You alright? You ran outta there pretty quick?”

Again, she exhales. “I was kinda hoping nobody noticed,” she lets out a small laugh. 

“Yeah, well, there’s a lot of things I notice,” Ricky’s brows scrunch, as he leans up against the lockers, facing her. 

“Such as?” Gina tries to play it off, attempting to ignore the dancing in her stomach, as she has been for a while now. 

His expression remains serious, though. “I don’t know- it just, lately you’ve seen kinda down. Are you sure you’re okay?”

He just looks at her and already, she feels her heart speeding up.

She can’t lie, not to him. So, she won’t even bother coming up with an excuse.

“You’re right, I’m not,” she says.

And he looks even more confused. “Gina-” he tries, but she needs to say this. 

She needs to put herself first.

“Ricky,” she sighs, staring into those big,  _ kind,  _ brown eyes of his that intrigued her the moment she met him. “I don’t think we should talk like this anymore.”

His scowl grows deeper. “Talk like  _ what? _ ” 

Gina doesn’t answer that. “You’re happy with her, right? Nini?” 

“What?” he’s taken aback by this. “I mean, yeah, I guess, but what does that have to do with us not talking anymore?”

_ Yup _ , she knew it. He’s happy. The last thing Gina wants is to take that away from him. She also doesn’t want to get hurt pining over some boy she knows she can never be with. She has to put herself first before her heart really gets broken.

So, she gives him a small smile. “We should get back to rehearsals,” she says. “Can’t rehearse without Troy,” and she ignores the stinging in her chest as she walks past him, back to rehearsals.

_ This is all for the better _ , Gina tells herself to ease her sadness.

-

_ Did I do something wrong? _

Ricky texts her later that day.

_ You could never. _

Gina texts him back before silencing her phone. She spends the rest of the night wondering how she let her feelings get this strong. 

\- 

It does get rather lonely without talking to him every day like she used to.

Gina still sees him every rehearsal and any time they pass each other in the hallway. She still smiles at him every time he looks her way. It’s her way of telling him that she harbors no hard feelings towards him.

Still, these  _ feelings  _ don’t seem to be going anywhere. It doesn’t help that he’s trying so damn hard to reach out. It actually hurts turning each of his attempts down.

This is for the best, though. Both his and hers. The last thing she needs is to make their already weird relationship even weirder. She doesn’t want him to pity her, either. 

Surprisingly, Gina really does care about what he thinks- she did even before she realized she liked him. 

She misses him. 

But, this is for the best.

-

He’s gone over it about a thousand times in his head and he still can’t figure out what he did wrong. 

If he did do something wrong, then why can’t she just tell him so he can apologize? The last thing Ricky ever wants to do is hurt her feelings in any way. 

He felt terrible when he did so during homecoming. His apology is actually what sort of led to their friendship. Turns out Gina’s really nice and funny and she makes him feel really good- and in return, he kind of hoped he was doing the same for her. Gina actually seemed so much at ease when they would hang out.

Ricky also felt a sense of security around her. She makes him feel like he belongs.

He misses her.

“You’re moping again,” Nini points out as she sits beside him, during lunch. “Seriously, Ricky, what’s going on?” she rubs his back in attempted comfort. “Are you okay?”

With his head resting on his palm, he sighs. “It’s Gina,” he admits, absent-mindedly. 

“Gina?” Nini seems thrown off by this. It only then hits him what  _ this  _ looks like. He’s over here moping about another girl in front of his girlfriend, but it’s not like that!

At least, he doesn’t think it’s like that. 

“I mean, it’s just that-” Ricky trails off as Gina walks past their table, red tray in her hands. Suddenly, his entire attention is on her while she does her best to avoid meeting his gaze. He really wants to talk to her, to fix this; whatever he did she has to know that he had no intention of hurting her. 

“Ricky?” Nini’s voice tears his attention away from Gina. He can almost swear he sees a flash of hurt in Nini’s eyes, as they flicker back and forth between him and Gina. “Did…” she hesitates. “Did something happen between you two?”

“What? No, it’s not like that.” he’d never to that to her, to anyone! Neither Gina or Nini or  _ anyone  _ deserves to be disrespected that way.

“Then why do you keep looking at her as if she broke your heart?”

Nini’s words catch him off guard, so much, that he hadn’t even realized he had been staring in the direction Gina had walked off. “She… She did not break my heart?” even to himself, Ricky doesn’t sound too convincing. “It’s just- Gina, she won’t even talk to me.. and I don’t know why.”

He doesn’t. All he knows is he misses her like crazy.

-

Things end with Nini not long after. Apparently, things aren’t like they used to be. She said she’s going to try and figure herself out first and advised him to do the same. Ricky doesn’t even know what she meant by that. 

This split actually hurts way less than the first one did. Maybe it’s because he’s still too focused on trying to figure out what he did to hurt Gina.

-

“We need to talk,” he approaches her weeks after they stopped talking. He misses her and Ricky’s determined to fix them. 

She closes her locker. “About the musical?” she questions. Opening night is only days away now.

“About us,” he tells her.

Gripping onto her backpack’s strap, she sighs. “Ricky, I already told you. You didn’t do anything, we’re just better off as...  _ acquaintances _ than friends.”

That stings. Ricky actually thinks he’s better off when they were friends.

“Gina, please.” He doesn’t know why he’s trying so much harder to rekindle a friendship over his relationship with Nini. He just misses Gina, like, a lot. 

-

She agrees and they meet in the auditorium before final rehearsals start. It’s the same recycled conversations. Ricky asks her what he did wrong, she says it’s nothing, and he insists and apologizes.

Except, this cycle takes a new turn.

She finally snaps. “Ugh, can’t you just accept that I can’t be around you because I have all these  _ feelings  _ that come up and I don’t know what to do with them!” she runs her hands through her curly hair.

Ricky’s left at a loss of her words at that. 

_ Gina... likes him? _ That thought begins to set in as she continues. 

“You’re just… so incredible, Ricky,” Gina sighs, her voice much quieter now. “And don’t worry, I know you don’t feel the same way, which is why I told you we shouldn’t talk anymore. But you, you just kept insisting, with your kind words and the sweetest apologies when you have nothing to apologize for! I’m the one who fell for a guy I knew was in love with someone else.”

There’s so many thoughts in his head, he doesn’t know what information to process first. He does notice the increasing speed of his heart, though. 

He wants to say something, but Ricky can’t bring himself to form words. 

“I’m sorry if I made things weird,” Gina gives him a sad smile. “That’s why I told you to leave things alone,” she spares him one last look before the bell rings and everyone starts piling into the room.

-

Ricky seems spaced out. She shouldn’t have told him, she should’ve just held it in. Now, because of her lack of self-control, they probably can’t ever go back to being friends. Gina had hoped that when these feelings of hers went away that things could go back to normal, but now, that seems out of the question.

-

She continues to avoid him for the next few days. This time, she can’t bring herself to smile at him whenever she catches him looking in her direction.

She’s really done it this time.

-

Opening night is here and Ricky’s trying really hard to not forget his lines or any of the lyrics. Despite his many thoughts though, Gina still takes up most of them.

He finds her standing from the side of the stage, looking at the emerging audience. Ricky’s not sure what he feels anymore, all he knows is that he can’t stop thinking about Gina. Honestly, he hasn’t been able to stop ever since homecoming. 

It’s like, something  _ clicked  _ that night. 

“Hey,” he approaches, hoping he doesn’t sound as anxious as he feels. 

Gina’s always been pretty, but tonight, she looks stunning- so much, that he can feel his palms begin to sweat, and he’s pretty sure these aren’t nerves about getting up on stage; he made peace with that a while ago.

“Hi,” she sounds unsure. 

She likes him, he’s known that for a few days now. 

Ricky wants to bring this up, he knows the timing isn’t great, but he just can’t stop thinking about it.

He clears his throat. “So-”

“You don’t have to feel sorry for me,” Gina cuts him off, keeping her gaze straight. “It’s just a stupid crush, I promise I’ll get over it.”

_ Get over it. _ That’s the thing, it’s him who hasn’t been able to get over what she’s said.

Ricky tries again. “What if,” he somehow finds the courage to speak. “What if I don’t want that?”

Gina turns to face him and his heart starts racing. He can’t believe he never noticed this effect she has on him. Maybe he was just oblivious to this all along. 

“What?” she sounds disbelieved. 

Ricky’s never been great at words. Sometimes, it’s hard to touch into his emotions and say what he feels, but right now, all he wants is to tell Gina is how beautiful she looks and that he likes her too.

_ Oh, wow.  _

_ He likes her, too.  _

_ Really likes her. _

He’s not great when it comes to verbally expressing himself, so he shows her.

Ricky kisses her.

It takes them both by surprise. 

There’s a moment of hesitance, but Gina kisses back.

This kiss, it feels like a breath of fresh air. It feels so right- for the first time in a long while, everything just  _ clicks  _ again. 

Gina pulls back, resting her hand on his shoulder. She looks up at him, those beautiful, brown eyes filled with doubt. “Why?” she asks. 

And Ricky takes her hands in his. They’re warm and soft. “I feel something too,” he tells her. “Gina, I like you.”

Gina breaks into a smile.

And that smile, the two of them standing hand-in-hand, all of  _ this;  _ it feels like the start of something new. 

.

**Author's Note:**

> I really didn't know how to end this, so I'm sorry if it felt too rushed.


End file.
